Portable communications devices, such cellular telephones, are becoming more compact and adapting distinct design features. One design that provides both functional and aesthetical benefits is the flip-phone design. The flip phone design has a cover that flips from a closed or folded position to an open or extended position. The cover may contain a speaker or microphone so that when the cover is placed into its extended position, the cover is able to act as part of the phone structure and extend the earpiece or microphone away from the body of the phone. This allows the body of the phone to be correspondingly smaller.
A recognized problem with using a flip phone design is that the performance of a clam shell cellular phone antenna is degraded when mounted on a metal chassis phone. The mechanism that creates the degradation includes currents that are induced by the antenna on the metal phone chassis. These currents cancel a portion of the radiation field that is generated by the antenna currents. Despite this problem, the use of metal chassis in flip phone designs has several advantages. When using a metal chassis in a flip phone design, the dimensions of the antenna are typically increased in order to recover this lost radiation performance. Increasing the antenna dimensions, however, negatively impacts the styling and distinctiveness of the product.
Therefore a need exists to overcome the problems with the prior art as discussed above.